After being harassed in multiple discord channels by powermod FlyingSquid the news mod blackbeard has shuttered his account and moved to bluesky.
https://lemmy.world/u/Blackbeard
"The recklessness with which people downvote polite disagreements reminds me of all the worst parts of Reddit, and it proves to me that this isn’t the social media savior I’d hoped it would be, and is instead just another echo chamber. I hope eventually lemmy.world (and the fediverse more broadly) can grow out of that, but some of the behavior I’ve seen on the inside from both mods and admins doesn’t really inspire much confidence for that kind of evolution in the short term. "
FlyingSquid is the same mod who has the power to siteban people from lemmy.world
Why does lemmy.world keep having issues with their powermods and admins? Why do powermods get the ability to siteban their enemies from the largest instance?
Hi, LW Community Team here.
We’ve made efforts to avoid the kind of supermods that existed on Reddit, and this is a great example. We’ve tried to have more mods with fewer communities each, and to limit the number of major communities under the same mods. This was a disagreement between two mods of major LW communities, FlyingSquid at worldnews and Blackbeard as a moderator of News and PoliticalDiscussion. Notably, this seems to be a disagreement from a couple months ago.
FlyingSquid moderates one major politically involved community (the other is closed). If Blackbeard wanted to ban him from News for report abuse, he certainly could have done that. Admins and the Community Team here try not to get overly involved in individual communities, and that wouldn’t seem extremely out of line.
Blackbeard seems to have been concerned about getting side-wide banned by Flying. I’ve seen no evidence of anyone using the bot outside of extremely obvious scammers, trolls, and ban evasion. And I don’t believe FlyingSquid would use that bot inappropriately. If that does become a problem, we’d absolutely take action. You always have the options to appeal directly to the admins (email in the LW sidebar). Currently, it’s nice to have the extra help in keeping scams and spam off the site.
I do wish Blackbeard had talked to us about his concerns. He seemed to be pretty reasonable from my interactions with him. He’d be welcome back if we could get through this misunderstanding.
Thanks for jumping in
I just wish FS would slow down on commenting. Lemmy world comment sections feel like a FS echo chamber because they feel the need to comment on every single post.
Even if I agree with many of their opinions, that’s just not what I want out of Lemmy, so I have them filtered.
Want to drive a power drunk redditor crazy? Block them, do not interact with them at all. It drives those types up a wall.
Whaaat FlyingSquid made a huge deal out of a simple disagreement and made it all about themselves unprompted and made it personal? I’m shocked–that he didn’t mention his offspring and him moving to England. 🙄
If you continue to report opinions and simple disagreements as misinformation, we will take action against your account for report abuse, same as we would any account.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to interpret that as a threat to ban the account.
That one was the other way, Blackbeard threatening FlyingSquid. Blackbeard has never had the power to site ban, only community ban.
Yeah - I was disagreeing with the OP. I quoted BB because later on they said “I’ve not even HINTED at banning you [from the community]”
Removed by mod
Daw. You think that you shouldn’t have any rules? How fast would that go downhill, hmmm? The rules aren’t to power trip. It’s to keep it civil, and on topic.
But you knew that. You just love being an ass.
Oh, and zero of your community bans are from .world
Wow. They really do like stirring the pot don’t they?
deleted by creator
Full disclosure, I tend to agree with FlyingSquid in the instance that kicked all of this off. I don’t have a clear opinion of them as a mod, but personally I wish the LW mods would do a lot more about the “Kamala Harris = Hitler” type of misinformation that gets a free pass on a lot of LW.
FlyingSquid comes across as perfectly reasonable in this conversation. Their arguments that another mod thanked them for reporting stuff, that it’s two reports over the course of
two weeksa week which is hardly excessive, and then when the two people couldn’t see eye to eye, they said they just wouldn’t flag anything, sounds all perfectly reasonable and sensible. For some reason that wasn’t okay, and the conversation got personal, with Blackbeard constantly posting these aggrieved attacks about how FlyingSquid was being childish if he didn’t continue to report things in someone else’s community occasionally, but never anything that the mods there thought was not worthy of removal. And then petulantly refusing to say something along the lines of, “Of course you’re welcome to post there if you want” when asked repeatedly if it was okay for them to just post and participate still.I haven’t seen any Discord harassment, so maybe I missed something, but if this is what gets posted as justification for why FlyingSquid is a terrible moderator, I suspect that the “harassment” is more of the same. Maybe it’s along the lines of “not saying exactly what I want you to say, or having conversation with other people where you say things I don’t want you to say.” People are allowed to disagree with each other over what is misinformation, or choose not to report content in someone else’s community if they get some hostile responses when they do. Trying to order someone else around and then getting personally insulting with them when they politely tell you “No, I don’t agree with how you see it,” is ridiculous.
Edit: I don’t know why I said two weeks, it was one week.
I’m not sure I’d agree that FS comes off as perfectly reasonable because I do get a pretty strong beg me to stay or I’ll leave vibe… but I am amused that OP here read that thread and decided that FS was the aggressor here.
Removed by mod
Sorry about your tiny wiener, man.woah this is such a weird comment without the context of the now removed parent. I swear it was like a really good zinger.Removed by mod
Removed by mod
I fully ack with this statement.
There is a failure to settle what Misinformation is, FlyingSquid can’t be “more discerning about flagging/reporting” that Blackbeard wished him to do. YET Blackbeard failed to answer FlyingSquad exactly what he meant by this. And in that little inciting report “equating the US runners to X,Y,Z.” is not just an opinion, its defamation, a felony.
Blackbeard had the option to clearly say, “We want to allow people to say any bad thing about the Democrats that they want, even if it seems clearly disingenuous or like a pattern on the part of that particular user. We don’t consider that to be misinformation.” That would have clarified things and my guess is that FlyingSquid wouldn’t have argued with it. Blackbeard’s desire to tiptoe around saying that directly, for obvious reasons, and just say “be more discerning,” was what led to FlyingSquid’s confusion which Blackbeard for some reason interpreted as being hostile and obstinate about it.
It’s like a flashback to every boss who gives unclear direction about expectations, even when giving you a bollocking about how you did it wrong this time and even when asked point-blank. Except, FlyingSquid isn’t getting paid to put up with it, hence the “I think I just won’t participate then” which is probably a lot more polite than I would have been about it.
Blackbeard’s desire to tiptoe around saying that directly
Well I imagine that a Moderator should have a solid stance regarding, well, moderation. Blackbeard simply didn’t cut it. They could have just stepped down, but no, they had to nuke the account, post that screenshot to show their people skills and finally head to bluesky.
I agreed with you up until you said “FlyingSquid saying he won’t flag anything is super reasonable.” If I’m working with a peer and I’m an asshole to them about our shared responsibilities and they say “well fine I just won’t do the thing both of us are supposed to do any more,” I’d argue that’s childish. Granted I started it and drug them down to my level, but they’re down there too. Both sides get real fucking dramatic after that. It’s pretty clear Blackbeard started swinging and FlyingSquid came along for the ride.
To me, the long discord screenshot is just evidence that FlyingSquid had a bad day and said some dumb shit to someone pushing his buttons. I don’t think it contributes to the evidence that he’s a bad mod; that has to come from elsewhere. If we had evidence that FlyingSquid drops down into the mud a bunch with users, not fellow moderators, that would be sufficient.
But, it’s not a shared responsibility. Two times in a week he saw something in someone else’s community and flagged it, trying I guess to be a good citizen, and then he got this demanding and rude extensive DM chat about it with all these personal accusations. I sort of agree that he let his buttons get pushed, but he tried way harder to keep an open dialogue about it and reach a real resolution than I would have.
I think about the time when he offered to just not report anything, problem solved, and Blackbeard said he was childish and ridiculous, I would have just said “I wasn’t asking. You’re not my boss, I am free to report or not report in any fashion I would like to. If you want to give me grief about my reports, but refuse to clarify which ones you do and don’t want to receive, then I will not report. Have a good one, the matter is closed as far as I’m concerned.”
So they’re not co-moderators in this situation? That definitely changes my analysis. I feel like instance mods have some shared responsibility for the health of their instance so I wouldn’t say it’s completely not his job; the rest of my understanding was wrong if they don’t share responsibility!
I disagree that Blackbeard wouldn’t “clarify which ones you do and don’t want to receive.” Blackbeard laid out their perspective for moderation of the community, which, if FlyingSquid is not a co-moderator, is what flies, not the opinion you and FlyingSquid share. I didn’t think that was unclear at all; FlyingSquid just didn’t agree.
It’s very easy for me to say from my armchair that I’m not going to take shit from a moderator over unclear rules; if it’s not in the sidebar fuck off with telling me what I can’t report. I think you and I both agree Blackbeard was shit at trying to resolve conflict here.
Yeah, FS was just reporting as a normal user in someone else’s community.
I do get what you mean. It wouldn’t have been hard to read between the lines. Blackbeard was clearly hinting that “No misinformation” in the sidebar means “No linking to Breitbart” but that political misinformation accounts are okay. I think it was pretty fair for FlyingSquid to ask him to clarify exactly what he meant, though, and lay out clearly that in his reading of the rules he was reporting a rule-breaking comment and so didn’t do anything wrong, instead of operating off of Blackbeard’s hints. Especially since it sounded like he was getting conflicting “hints” from other moderators.
Like I say, my judgement on it is influenced because I personally wish the LW moderators would do a lot more about the accounts that are clearly there just to put political misinformation of some type into the comments, so I probably would agree with FS’s categorization of that user and be resistant to someone telling me not to worry about it because it’s impossible for anyone “just stating an opinion” to be misinformation.
I personally feel like you’d be justified continuing to report in that situation until the sidebar tells you not to. Getting yelled at in Discord is not a lemmy conversation and it’s not open at all. Your point about differences in mod opinions carries a lot of weight here because, as a user, if it’s not in the sidebar it doesn’t exist.
I am very happy to jump on the anti-FS bandwagon in other threads. I just don’t think this is a good example and it’s very easy to put myself in those shoes here. Thanks for the analysis! I appreciate you.
Removed by mod
It is not misinformation to say that Kamala Harris is the commander in chief of the largest military force in the world and she is overseeing a genocide.
That is textbook misinformation.
- Kamala Harris is not the commander in chief, Biden is.
- Kamala Harris is not “overseeing” anything in Gaza. Netanyahu is overseeing the genocide, Biden is arming it for some reason, and Kamala Harris is a whole different person running a political campaign to be able to make decisions about what we’re going to do now that our ally has apparently decided to kill millions of people who didn’t do anything wrong.
The linkage of Kamala Harris with the genocide in Gaza, persistently and disingenuously, with an apparently-successful outcome of greatly increasing the genocide by putting Trump in charge instead, is one major type of misinformation on Lemmy. If you were coming and saying “It is not misinformation to say that Kamala Harris hasn’t even condemned the genocide and is losing Arab voters because of her attempt to waffle on this crystal-clear issue,” then that wouldn’t be misinformation, whether I agreed with it personally or not. But going off into factual la-la land in order to accomplish your political goals for any particular discussion is absolutely misinformation. Thank you for providing a good example.
Removed by mod
I’m largely on your side here but
Biden literally vanishes for weeks at a time. Biden is a walking corpse who doesn’t make any decisions, they have to stuff him full of Adderall to get him to do anything
Source? This sounds like Republican propaganda
And just to be clear- I feel that a vote for either Harris or Trump was a vote for genocide
I’m with you on this Lukacs is a something of a mirror image of the partisan twits he’s railing against.
FS needs to calm down and have their abusive and manipulative actions there underlined so that they can learn from them and move on.
Removed by mod
So are you an awful person in real life too, or just online?
Tell me you don’t know what the Vice President does without telling me you don’t know what the Vice President does.
This is exactly the sort of misinformation I remove from Politics on a daily basis.
There is a PUBLIC PROCESS for Harris to become President:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/politics/kamala-harris-presidential-power/index.html
"To officially transfer the presidential powers to Harris, Biden sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the president pro tempore of the Senate, at 10:10 a.m. ET before going under anesthesia.
The letter reads: “Today I will undergo a routine medical procedure requiring sedation. In view of present circumstances, I have determined to transfer temporarily the powers and duties of the office of President of the United States to the Vice President during the brief period of the procedure and recovery.”"
Flying Squid takes things personally rather often, and can get heated especially on controversial topics. I don’t always agree with their behaviour as a user and as a mod, but tbh they are the more reasonable party in this particular exchange, though some of the responses are more annoying. The conversation could have easily ended like 1/4 of the way through by either of them. It’s unclear if it’s harassment to me, because I am reading it as both persistently acting childishly at times.
If they leave they leave, that’s fine. No matter who is right in this, Blackbeard has no obligation to deal with stuff he doesn’t want to.
Sounds like this was already resolved within the mod team. So if OP you’re posting for history or were unaware, fine (but you ought to look for, ask and add surrounding context and actions, next time). If you’re posting just to cause drama and a flamewar, shame on you.
Lastly, discord? Come on, we’re on Lemmy here, harass people on a federated FOSS protocol like matrix! /s
I’m not sure how FlyingSquid is the bad guy here when Blackbeard is the one going around DMing Lemmy users off-platform about their reports. If you disagree with the reported content, then dismiss it. Blackbeard is the one who instigated this by opening a DM with FlyingSquid to begin with. Blackbeard doesn’t understand how to be a mod, it seems.
This thread is garbage. OP is bad and should feel bad.
If you disagree with the reported content, then dismiss it.
This is what I don’t get about “report abuse”. It’s entirely in their power to completely ignore reports they think are unnecessary or in bad faith. They do nothing unless the mod acts on them. I got an instance ban for reporting someone that instantly resorted to cursing and insults after a minor correction from me. Apparently someone else reported the same comment (shocking) and the admin decided it was “brigading” 🙄
Report abuse can be tiring for moderators to deal with, especially since they already do their job for free.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Everyone Sucks Here.
Oh, this isn’t r/AITAH? Sheesh, thought I somehow stumbled back onto reddit.
Flying Squid has a site wide reputation for being like this. Arguing/discussing anything with this person is like talking to a wall. Not to mention their overuse and abuse of authority.
FS is annoying and thinks every single time someone disagrees with them, its a personal attack and they must be aligned to some power.
Literally anytime someone used to just lightly criticize their favorite thing or person, FS would write blocks of text explaining why that opinion or fact was unjustified, and if you continued, you got banned.
FS is annoying and acts like they are better for just random things. Literally recently they said they’re trying to leave the United States, and acting like its a noble sacrifice to leave the queer and BIPOC they once “defended and care about” behind. Said “Maybe I’ll give some GoFundMes, I don’t care.”
If you want some insight, check this user’s comments and sort by controversial. Then do the same for FlyingSquid.
Have some citations for that abuse of authority? OP alluded to abuse of authority by pointing out various powers FlyingSquid has, but in my mind very tellingly didn’t actually provide any examples of abuse of authority. The screenshotted conversation, where a person with some site admin powers is reporting things as a regular user, and then when a mod gets really hostile and insulting with them, simply says “Oh, okay, I think I just won’t participate in your stuff then, if my presence is unwanted,” doesn’t exactly paint the picture of some kind of power-mad petulant tyrant.
Hey, yo, I got one! I once argued with FS about something where he continuously attempted to goad me, argued disingenuously, and acted childishly, and when I rightfully called him out on all of that, he removed my comment. It was a rather small abuse of power, but I have seen him act righteously indignant, especially when he is called out for acting like a child. He does not differentiate this from a personal attack, especially when he was very much responsible for escalating several interactions he has with others.
What community did this take place in?
Edit: I think I found it.
https://lemmy.world/comment/12606768
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=1040702
It’s sort of an ESH situation, and after that length of bickering I can’t see why either of you continued the conversation. But I don’t at all agree with your summary. It looks to me like he wanted to talk facts, you wanted to insult him and avoid the factual discussion, and he ended the conversation and then removed one comment afterwards where you started going after him personally (“insipid” “impetuous” “childish”).
I’m not sure what you were trying to accomplish by refusing to answer his questions and instead inflaming the bickering, but ending the conversation and removing the escalation sounds like the right response to me.
Additionally, I called him childish because he was mocking others, and I pointed that out to him with his own quote.
He was not arguing in good faith, and to believe otherwise is to, frankly, underestimate him.
I did answer his questions. He didn’t like the answers. They weren’t either-or question, and it can, indeed, be answered with answers he doesn’t like, because those questions were leading.
There’s a mod log, but also from this post I just found out a bot is used to hide the admin/mod doing the actions.
It’s clear FS has been doing this for some time and Blackbeard was getting sick and tired of it. Telling someone who regularly reports users to mind what they consider report worthy is something I imagine a lot of mods have to do. Saying “Well then, I guess I won’t report anything if that’s the way it’s going to be” is pretty childish IMO. Especially considering FS is a mod themselves.
FS is just very combative in nature. I’ve seen it several times. They’re not an easy person to have a discussion with.
So, no citations for abuse of power? Just that they had a disagreement with someone in Discord?
I mean sure, here’s an example. https://lemm.ee/post/44255924/15323391
I thought this one was ironic given the topic of conversation from this post.
Oh no! What happened after saroh was banned?
It would be silly if your case for “abuse of power” was that two months ago, FlyingSquid sent one rude message to one user because he made a mistake, so I know it’s not that.
People on Lemmy really seem to hate his guts, that much is apparent. Not just in this thread but everywhere else as well.
I don’t think they actually do. I think it’s a very vocal contingent, which has at least a little bit of overlap with the “Kamala Harris is literally Hitler” contingent. Also, I don’t participate enough in lemmy.world to be aware of what their normal moderation style is, but just based on this one instance it sounds like FlyingSquid unlike most LW mods is interested in taking some kind of action against the “Kamala Harris is literally Hitler” contingent.
Make of that what you will.
The general message I’m getting in the comments here are pretty favorable to FS. He’s a good guy. And his private discussion should not have been made public.
This entire post is because of FlyingSquid throwing a tantrum because Blackbeard told them to mind how they report comments. That’s all the was asked. This is after months of this behavior. Then FlyingSquid goes on this whole rant about how they feel unsafe and took a less than hour silence as being ignored and began acting even more childishly.
Meanwhile I gave one example of FlyingSquid literally running into the same thing for a community they mod and threatening to ban the person with absolutely zero discussion. They could have just started with a warning like Blackbeard did but instead went straight for threatening to ban the user.
Are you not seeing the double standard?
It is obvious that you and I see the screenshotted conversation very differently from one another.
I don’t think FlyingSquid should have sent one rude message to that one user that one time, no. I don’t see that as any kind of abuse of power.
I think I’ve said about as much as I want to say about this situation at this point.
deleted by creator
Yeah i cant believe the people defending them in this thread. I guess anyone can build up a little following of devoted supporters regardless of how childish and argumentative they behave. Really makes you think. Flying Squid does not come out of this looking good in any way.
Why not? flyingsquid simply wanted clarification on how to discern what something is misinformation and what ain’t.
Blackbeard seems to not cut it as a mod.
Blackbeard was actually an excellent mod. I’m not picking sides on this fight, as it was resolved 2 months ago.
Oh lol I failed to miss the dates. OP really tried to dig up dirt for whatever reasons.
Lmao he was literally sea-lioning. Misinformation is also not something that needs to be clarified beyond blackbeards first statement which is “someones opinion that you disagree with, that is clearly just an opinion, is not misinformation”. I think the person trying to silence dissenting opinions and then acting like a child when they get called out for it is the one who doesn’t cut it as a mod, actually.
yet the other mod (next to blackbeard) said it was fine what FlyingSqud was doing. So how to effing trust in this matter?
Asking another mod to mind how they report things should not have been met with this kind of hostility. It was a very simple ask.
But in what capacity should someone mind how to report things? Blackbeard failed to clarify, this escalation was on them.
Misinformation applies to statements of fact not opinion. This was the first thing said. Asking for further ‘clarification’ was done in bad faith and was just an attempt to obfuscate the issue and seem ‘reasonable’. Its a tactic most intelligent adults can recognize and wont put up with, like when a child tries to pretend they dont know how to do their chores and just need you to show them ‘one more time’. And then goes ‘fine since i obviously cant do it right i just wont do it at all’
The first message had Blackbeard clarify the difference between opinion and misinformation. It’s pretty straightforward.
I agree with FlyingSquid here. That opinion that borders defamation, equating political runner with several people and even Hitler, is absolute report worthy.
Defamation is not against the rules and sounds like quite a bit of a stretch. No one on Lemmy is capable of defaming anyone even remotely that famous. It’s clearly an example of frivolous reporting.
Removed by mod
What else does an old disabled white dude have time for?
Patently false and wholly unsupported, too? Tell me you’ve had irrational run-ins with said mod that somehow refused to react how you wanted, you know without saying it word for word, right?
Removed by mod
Ooh, yeah, that’s it. C’mon, baby, Baader mein hof like only you can. Unf. So good.
Removed by mod
Didn’t kink shame, ya Temu Marxist. 😚
Why are Lemmy mods from .world coordinating on discord lmao
you gotta coordinate somewhere, no?
but yeah, matrix would have been nicer.
It’s an easy way to work together. Yeah, Matrix would have made more sense.
They have other chat solutions as well, but not my place, so not my topic.
When you join, you can verify, and you’re added to channels for your community/ies. If you’re the first, they create the community channel automatically. Overall, a good idea.
I left the server, but for my own reasons unrelated to the mods/admins. Just needed to get rid of some discord servers.
There are multiple back channels for coordination, I’ve been invited to Discord and Element, there was even (briefly) a Slack channel, but that seems to have closed due to it being a trial period or something. There are likely others I’m not aware of having not been invited.
But it’s good for mods and admins to collaborate.
But they have no mutual servers in this screenshot. So it looks like someone just randomly found someone on discord which is kind of weird. Unless one of them left the server(s) you reference before the screenshot.
they did leave before taking the screenshot
Removed by mod
Blackbeard seems to be okay with Harris=Hitler and doesn’t want an “echochamber” but is going to bluesky?
lol
lmao
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Speaking to the bot thing, a few of us have access to it in order to remove egregious violations in communities where we may not be mods.
I’ve used it to remove CSAM accounts and posts for example. Middle of the night spam attacks, and so on.
Really it’s for content in which there is no question it should be removed… when the bot is working. :) Sorry @[email protected] ! ;) It doesn’t work a LOT!
Jeeze both people come across as petty idiots. Lots of passive aggressive nonsense, and both sides want to have the last word.
Also it drives me up the wall when 2 people argue and one person tells the other to “calm down”. And in this case it’s “CALM DONW” and “CALM YOURSELF” between line by line quotes. So fucking childish.
I wish Blackbeard all the best on Bluesky; I think they will be disappointed. Human nature is human nature; I’ve been around long enough to see the cylical nature of social media. A new thing comes along, everyone joins, there is a love-in, and a “consensus” is built around how this time it’s be great and what is and isn’t allowed. Then things grow and a consensus that holds with 10 people breaks down with 100 or 1000, and people blame the new people for the change.
And mods at each others throats is just the nature of the beast. This has played out over and over on the internet - Usenet through to X, Reddit, etc, and the fediverse will experience the same. It’s just human nature.
No way?! This is how most online moderators act, gives them a sense of superiority and power. Both are acting fucking childish. Also lemmyworld is complete cancer.
Removed by mod
Agreed that both parties look bad here. Blackbeard was needlessly condescending from the onset and FlyingSquid’s victim complex escalated things quickly for no reason. Blackbeard was pretty bad at communicating, but I think the calm down messages were meant to reinforce that they needed more time to respond to messages and that the idea that FlyingSquid was going to be banned or not allowed to post was apropos of nothing.
Blackbeard should have asked FlyingSquid to clarify where the misinformation was. Unless you are trying to take the comment literally, the comment essentially says “each candidate’s actions resemble those of these despised historical figures” which is too abstract to be falsifiable. Then they should have said that FlyingSquid and anyone else is welcome on the community until they show themselves as a bad actor, and that this was just a misunderstanding. And creating false reports could be rule-breaking in the sense of being spam if it’s clearly malicious.
I’m pretty sure Squid can’t siteban from lemmy.world. He’s not an admin.
